Airbnb CFO Suddenly Leaves Company

Published at 3:03 PM PDT on Sep 18, 2014

Receive the latest press-here updates in your inbox

Airbnb chief financial officer Andrew Swain seems to have left the company, according to his email auto-responder anyway.

TechCrunch reports that Swain's email auto-responders reads, “Andrew Swain has recently left the company. If your email is work related please contact Beth Adair." Adair's informatoion is listed in the email and Airbnb has now confirmed Swain has left the company.

Apparently Swain was asked to resign and he complied, according to TechCrunch, with the idea that Swain "wasn't the right fit" for the next phase of the startup. No one has been tapped for his position.

Swain started working for Airbnb two years ago. Previously he was a vice president of finance at Intuit's consumer group, and he also worked as a vice president of corporate strategy at Inuit.

During his tenure at Airbnb, the startup experienced huge growth and funding so that it now serves over 17 million people in 190 countries.

Usually a CFO change means the company is looking to go public, and Airbnb has obviously been headed that way. Founder and chief technology officer Nathan Blecharczyk told Yahoo Finance, “Going public is a means, not an end goal . . . It’s a way of raising capital, and our company is currently very well capitalized, so there’s no need to think about an IPO right now.”

While that may be true, it's likely to happen in the next year, so the startup could already be looking for the financial wizard to help it through the process.